SAA 2013, Part 3: Scanning and Accidental Networking

On Wednesday morning I joined two other archivists in one of the SAA's community service projects.  Every year the SAA tries to give back a little to the community hosting the conference, whether through volunteers helping at a food bank or in a repository.  There were several different options this year and I chose to join the City Park Archives scanning project.  Digitization is something that I haven't had much of an opportunity to work on, either through classes or work, so I was excited to get a little more experience to add to my repertoire.

Unbound minute book being scanned

The project was to help the City Park Archives scan minute books from their collection. The books we were working with from from the 1890s.  They had been unbound and after we scanned them they would be getting rebound.  We got to use a BookEye overhead scanner, which was a first for all of us.  The machine was pretty easy to use, although it got touchy when the size of the pages wasn't exactly what it wanted.  Scanning was slow because of the number of times we had to rearrange and rescan pages, even though the last scan in that same position had gone perfectly.  I'm not sure how many books will eventually be scanned for the project, but we were excited to help, as well as meet some fellow new archivists.

Learning to use a new scanner

The most entertaining part of the experience actually came when we were waiting in the lobby for our ride.  We were joined by two men who asked if we were waiting for a cab.  When we said no they stayed in the lobby as well, clearly waiting for a cab they had called.  When you're standing that close it is impossible not to overhear conversations and it only took a few minutes for them to figure out we were archivists (there are just certain key words that no one else would be using in casual conversation).  They were also in town for the convention, vendors who had been visiting a friend in the same building and were now trying to get to the same hotel we were headed for.  So when our ride came we asked if they could join us, they canceled their cab and we spent the 15 minute drive chatting about the conference, the city, and our jobs.  It was a perfect case of accidental networking.  Everyone exchanged cards and I stopped by their booth the next day to find out more about the scanners they had, which might work well for when the museum has the money to digitize our lantern slide collection.  I'm not a person who's usually comfortable with coming up to strangers at cocktail parties, but it turns out I'm not bad when put into surprise carpools!  On a similar topic, I've discovered that my hair is an ice-breaking asset. Several people came up to me during the conference to compliment me on my hair and then we fell into archival conversations.  I wonder if I can get haircuts to count as business expenses?

SAA 2013, Part 2: The Battle of New Orleans

"In 1814 we took a little trip, along with Colonel Jackson down the Mighty Mississip . . . "

The American lines and cannons at the Chalmette Battlefied, with Malus-Beauregard House and live oaks in the background

On Tuesday I joined members of the SAA's Military Archives Roundtable and 6 Marines currently stationed in New Orleans on a bus tour to explore the New Orleans Campaign (December 1814-January 1815), the final campaign of the War of 1812.  Lillian Jackson Braun once wrote that a historic battlefield is all in your imagination.  Well, take a tour of two historic military sites with a group of archivist military history buffs and you bring far more than your own imagination with you.  Apologies ahead of time to my British friends, but (spoiler alert) you did lose this one.

Inside Fort Pike, with Lake St. Catherine in the background

We began the trip at historic Fort Pike, recently reopened after extensive damage from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.  The outer walls of the fort are 18 feet high and our guide told us the storm surge pushed the water over 14 feet above the walls during the worst of the storm.  The fort is about 23 miles east of New Orleans, and was actually built just after the war ended when the military decided to increase the area's defenses against both land and sea attacks.  We were told there was a fort

in this location before Pike was built in 1819 and it was this strategic location that the British wanted to avoid.  Captured Americans told the British the fort was heavily armed and its cannons would have no trouble taking out British ships.  So to avoid the hundreds of cannons the British thought were there (apparently only something like 12 were actually at the fort at the time) the British made the fateful decision to sail on towards Chalmette and come at New Orleans that way.

Cannon in a protective iron enclosure to keep it from falling into the fort in recoil after firing

 The fort has been restored well and our tour guide was excellent, describing how garrisoned troops would have lived, the blacksmith area where horse shoes and munitions would have been made, a small bakery where bread was baked.  In the heat of the morning you could imagine how miserable the workers would have been in the small stone areas!  Vents built into the walls took the worst of the smoke out, and probably some of the heat, and breezes from Lake St. Catherine helped
cool things down more.  But it was still not a job you'd want for long.  The fort lost its museum and papers, including letters and diaries written during its occupation in the Civil War, to Katrina.  Conservation experts are still working on some areas of the fort and a new museum is being planned.  It was a great way to set the stage for Chalmette.  Our leaders read from archival letters and British orders  to harass and annoy the Americans as much as they could- and take New Orleans if at all possible.  Even though peace talks were being carried out in Europe that would end the war, if the British were able to take New Orleans first they would have the right to plunder the rich city, perhaps even use it as a bargaining chip if the treaty talks stretched out.

Inner walls of Fort Pike

Our next stop was, of course, the Chalmette Battlefield.  Downriver of New Orleans, the battlefield stretches across a very flat plain against a levee and the Mississippi River.  The Battle of New Orleans was important for two main reasons.  First, it was a perfect melding of cultures and people into a new 'America'.  Native Americans fought along side freedmen, slaves, Creoles, pirates, and sharpshooters from Kentucky and Tennessee.  Remember that the Lousisiana Purchase had been concluded only a few years ago and Louisiana didn't consider itself 'American'.  Legend claims this is where the term "neutral ground" comes from- Creoles lived on one side of what America calls a median, the Americans lived on the other side and the grass in the middle was 'Neutral ground"between two peoples and cultures that didn't like each other.  The Battle of New Orleans was one of the first times everyone living in the region had to work together for a common goal.  Second,  it was a decisive victory for American.  Roughly 2,000 British troops died and about 20 American troops.  A huge moral booster!  According to our group leaders this is where the British learned they were dealing with "a new kind of American".  This was not meant as a compliment.  The American troops fighting here didn't worry about the rules of polite warfare (if there is such an oxymoron) that had governed Europe during the Napoleonic Wars.  They had no problems shooting at troops camped at night, aiming at their campfires, and at the very least making sure the soldiers had no sleep and few steady nerves when they finally fought.

Chalmette Battlefield- as flat today as it was in 1815. Not an inspiring march for the British

 The battlefield itself is as flat today as it was in the winter of 1815, the only rise being an earthen wall the Americans built to use for protection. One story was told about an American whose hat was shot at least five times, but was himself not harmed at all while he put his gun over the wall and shot at British soldiers (given the guns at the time I'm not sure this story is real, but it certainly sounds American).  The British marched straight into cannon fire with several of their commanders in the front ranks.  One of our Marines said that leading from the front was the perfect way to get killed and leave your troops to lose the battle, sending up an apology to British Major General Pakenham in particular, but telling the man "You were an idiot." Several commanders died on the front lines and their forces had to wait for orders from the back before continuing.

 I hadn't been to the battlefield since a school field trip a long time ago, and I enjoyed the discussion and debates of military enthusiasts and seeing the field through their eyes instead of just walking the paths and reading the signs describing a few key points in the battle.  I'm by no means a military expert but I am interested and want to learn more.  I'm going to have to do some research into good books on the campaign to make sure I remember what I learned on the trip, and hopefully pick up a few more things about one of the greatest battles in the area. Sink or Be Sunk was recommended by name, but anyone who has other suggestions, please pass them on!  

Cannons lined up as the British would have faced them

SAA 2013, Part 1: World War II Museum

A variety of planes hang overhead in the atrium

I spent this last week in my native city of New Orleans attending the 2013 annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists.  Going a few days early had the advantages of being able to spend some time with friends and family, eat really good food, and revisit a few favorite sites.  I saw the amazing rebuilding efforts in my old neighborhood, hit a few favorite restaurants, and no visit to New Orleans would be complete (for me anyway) without at least one trip to the French Market to search for new earrings.  This time I also returned to the National World War II Museum, which I hadn't been to since it opened as the D-Day Museum in 2000.  The museum has expanded dramatically in the last 13 years and now consists of about six different buildings and designated exhibit spaces where visitors can see a wide range of artifacts from the war.

A Sherman tank

We started our tour in the US Freedom Pavilion, a three story open spaced building with a variety of airplanes and tanks from the war.  Visitors can go up to the top level of the atrium to see the planes from different angles and read information about them.  The highest level is high enough up that the museum has signs warning visitors that those who aren't good with heights should probably not go all the way up.  The part of the Pavilion that impressed me the most was a level containing three large, interactive computer screens- very similar to what we want in our museum.  These screens start with a map of the globe and different important battles, the visitor can then touch on various battles to get specific information, photographs, videos, etc. about the battle, including the types of weapons both sides used. Other interactive screens listed every soldier who earned the Medal of Honor in the war and viewers can touch specific individuals to read their full biographies.  This area was wonderfully effective, and the interactive capabilities were not only cutting edge, but proved themselves very useful at engaging the interest of young visitors.  I watched a father and son looking over the screen, the son enjoyed touching things and bringing up pictures and the father reading about what they were seeing and keeping the boy's interest. He might or might not remember (or have understood) what he was hearing, but he will definitely remember the museum for the planes and "fun computers."

Smart screen, interactive computers impressed visitors of all ages

 The exhibits on the Pacific and European campaigns were well done.  I don't think that the European exhibit has changed much since the last time I was there, but they still stand the test of time.  Well designed displays of uniforms and weapons mix with effectively enlarged posters and newspaper articles to create a flow of information.  Many small side chambers are available with brief oral histories on various topics for true first hand accounts.  My favorite area is, probably not surprisingly, the  section on the D-Day invasion and Andrew Higgins. Anyone who doesn't know the story of the Higgins boats (made in New Orleans, tested in Lake Pontchartrain, landed at Normandy) should definitely spend time here.

A Higgins Boat landing craft, one of the highlights of the museum for every NOLA native

We also saw the 4D movie Beyond All Boundaries, a movie produced and narrated by Tom Hanks, done specifically for the museum.  Going in I had no idea what 4D meant.  What it means is a rather remarkable combination of movie, raised and lowered objects like other tv screens, radios, the nose of a bomber that lines up with a movie image so that it appears to be coming out of the screen, and 'snow' coming down on the audience.  Your chair vibrates when tanks roll by and bombs are dropped.  Bright lights flash rapidly to simulate gunfire during certain battle scenes (this was one problem I had- as someone prone to seizures I could have done without the flashing lights, or at least a warning).  The dropping of the bomb at the end was both dramatic, breathtaking, and eye-searing.  The movie was well done, although condensing the war into less than an hour meant editing out most of what our allies did to focus on America's actions during the war.  The movie was 'sanitized' so as not to shock young viewers- you knew what happened in the concentration camps without it being too graphic.  That said, it probably isn't a movie parents should take young children to. We sat next to a boy who was 10-12 years old who was clearly going to have nightmares for a week by the time it was over.  The museum as a whole is probably one that parents should think about before bringing their children to- obviously it covers serious themes and parents need to be sure their children can handle what they see (especially when the new exhibit on the concentration camps is finished).

As a museum professional I came away very impressed with the museum, and more than a little jealous of some of their technology.  There were a few things I was not completely happy with.  The large number of videos and narrating tapes were extremely effective, captured your attention, and would be very useful for those with visual disabilities.  However, because of the size of the rooms you were constantly bombarded by different narrations at the same time, which proved rather distracting.  The sheer size of the museum and its exhibits meant that by the time we reached the Pacific arena we were tired and overwhelmed.  It would have been better to see the movie, the Pacific and European campaigns over two different days to get everything out of it.  This will only increase with later exhibit openings.  While locals who buy memberships will be able to return frequently to get the most out of this museum, visitors who have only one day will not be able to fully take in the museum.  There were also a number of exhibit panels in a remarkably awful shade of orange that, combined with white lettering, made it difficult for the viewer to read, even if they wanted to.  Overall however, this museum remains one of the best I have ever visited, holding to high standards as a museum and honoring those who served and were effected by the war.  A remarkable place, not to be missed.

Continuing Education: the Exciting World of EAC-CPF

Just because you have a degree and have tossed your graduation cap in the air doesn't mean the learning is over.  Continuing education, conferences, and workshops are a big deal since technology and ideas continue to change- often faster than we can keep up with, or slower than we think reasonable.  On Monday I ventured into New York City to take advantage of a SAA (Society of American Archivists) workshop on the new and exciting world of EAC-CPF.

Warning to my non-archives readers! More than perhaps any other industry (except for computer technology) librarians and archivists love acronyms, initials, and alphabet soup.

What is EAC-CPF and why do we care? Encoded Archival Context- Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families is Encoded Archival Description (EAD) on steroids.  It takes the regular finding aids, keeps (most of) the standards we all know and love, and then dives deeper. I started hearing about EAC-CPF last spring in Kathy Wisser's Archival Access and Use class.  Kathy is one of the people working with an international group to develop EAC-CPF (their last meeting was three days in Italy. Poor them.) so she is very excited about the concept.  And by the end of the workshop I think the rest of us were almost as excited by the idea as she is.

What's the excitement about? Here's an example.  While I was interning at the Massachusetts Historical Society I processed a collection of bound volumes collected by Frederick Lewis Gay.  He collected a lot of Massachusetts historical items including several ledgers from a man named Knight, who recorded the amount of fish caught in the area each day (more complicated than this actually and I'd give you the link to the finding aid, but MHS hasn't activated it yet). I discovered several other of his ledgers made it to an archive in Newfoundland, and I'm sure there are more I didn't discover in other collections across the East Coast.  So if you want to research Knight and cod fishing, how do you know about all the places holding his ledgers? What if you want to find out about the man and his family? Before EAC-CPF you'd have to go to every possible archive, historical society, town hall records office, college, etc. that could reasonably be expected to have an interest in a collection like that and hope you got lucky.  The internet might make it easier, but you'd still worry you'd missed something and halfway through your thesis you'd be going insane, asking random squirrels why the archives didn't all talk to each other just enough to have a list of all the places you could find different collections that connected to Knight.  With the implementation of EAC-CPF, you would no longer have to rant at innocent wildlife like a lunatic (although depending on your thesis, I guess you still might do some ranting).  You could go to one record on Knight, or cod fishing ledgers, or a few other access points, and there he'd be: with connections to people and places he lived and worked, family members who might also have archival collections, other people who kept cod ledgers, etc.  You could be reasonably sure you now had a comprehensive list of all the places you needed to go to actually look at the ledgers and plan your research trips accordingly. Your sanity would be saved, your thesis would rewrite views on cod fishing on the East Coast, and you'd win a Pulitzer Prize.  Or get a cod named after you.  It's a small example for an encoding project that can also turn Corporate Bodies and Families into something more manageable to archivists and researchers alike, but you can see why it's exciting.

And the possibilities keep going.  Although she didn't go into it too much in our workshop, I've heard Kathy give other talks on EAC-CPF and discuss the idea that you could also encode relationships between people, families, and corporations: linking one person to any number of others through different relationships they had.  Married this person, worked for that person, attended the execution of another person (although that relationship seems a little one sided to me). Kathy says she's counted over 800 different sorts of relationships you might want to explore.  She was even asked recently about the encoded relationship between Dr. Samuel Johnson and his cat, Hodge.  Is the cat a Corporate Body or a Person?  Everyone agreed Hodge was a Person, in case you were wondering.

London, England: Statue of Hodge, Dr. Johnson's famous cat

Yes, some of this may be a little too detailed.  Maybe Johnson's cat doesn't need his own record since Hodge probably didn't leave any writings behind for archivists to collect (although I did find a poem about Hodge and Johnson written by Percival Stockdale for my cat loving friends). The implementation of EAC-CPF may still be out of reach for all institutions, some of which can't even afford to implement EAD let alone encode EAC-CPF for their backlogs.  But I think this is the archival future, gearing up in the present to make our professional lives both easier and more time consuming.  Most archivists I know are at least a little obsessive compulsive about details.  The more the merrier.  They want to be able to tell researchers all the places to find what they need when they need it.  Cooperation, not competition is becoming more and more the name of the game.  It's a concept we're talking about in the small museum world as well as the archival world, as something that might be worth looking into.  I'm sure the outside point of view is, what took you so long?

The future is now and it's name is EAC-CPF.

Reflections

Our museum coyote, who came out to say goodbye my last day of work

Changing times are always a good time for reflections.  Looking back on what’s worked, what hasn’t, what was surprising.  I live in the second hottest place in America (beaten only by Death Valley) and it’s a place that no one lives during the summer if they can get out.  Tomorrow I join the exodus and head back to the East Coast- at least for the summer.

I took this position 10 months ago and have come to love the desert, the mountains, and the rhythm of the area.  Seeing so many different plants and animals and developing the eyes to see the story the desert has to tell about the life its lived.  It’s a crazy place, and certainly not for everyone, but I love it.  I was given the opportunity to help build a new museum and the archives for that museum- pretty rare nowadays.  It’s been amazing.  I’ve learned more about developing an archive and the little things that go into creating a sustainable museum in a town of 200 people than I could have imagined at the beginning.  I’ve learned how much I enjoy researching and helping to build an exhibit, and the pleasure I take in watching other people enjoy it when I give tours.  I’ve worked with a lantern slide collection instead of just hearing about it in class. I’ve learned a little about the different levels of politics even a small museum must deal with to get things done. I’ve expanded my idea of what makes a successful event, and that it’s ok to be a little crazy when the occasion calls for it.  Not every event can have a Jugless Jug Band, but it’s almost as popular as a taco cart when they come.  I'm currently working on my first article to be published (hopefully) in a peer-reviewed journal and a conference presentation for the spring with my co-worker and roommate, Jessica Brody- which would be somce very exciting firsts if we selected!

I’ve got crazy stories that I will hopefully remember forever. Like the sidewinder who wanted to come to the latest Star Gazing Party we held.  Watching windmills rise (and fall) and the controversy they can cause.  Climbing trails and rocks I never thought I’d be able to do and being thrilled when I could do it.  Learning that cars need to have coolant, or at least water, added to them to function properly (long story, and I wasn’t driving!)  Exploring an ancient oyster bed in the desert, driving to a casino on a mountain to get a glimpse of a comet, and seeing some of the most amazing night skies that it is possible to see.  

I’ve met people I hope to stay in touch with the rest of my life, been adopted by multiple grandparents and the wonderful Hitch family, and fallen in love with an adorable little Pomeranian.  I’ve seen snakes, hawks, coyotes, and even the elusive big horned sheep.  I think I’ve gained a certain amount of confidence in myself and my work that only comes from being treated as an equal in a work environment and knowing that, in the end, while there are plenty of people who have travelled more, or have more or different experiences, than I have so far, I can still be their equal.

Star Gazing in the Desert

Star-gazing IV

This Saturday the museum held it's fourth star-gazing party. Over 160 people - many of them first timers to the museum - came out to enjoy a night with the stars.  Steve, our resident astronomer, gave a brief talk and showed some wonderful pictures he's taken with his telescope.  There were four telescopes for visitors to look through set up around the museum. Many got the chance to see not only a beautiful full moon rising, but also the "Dance of the Planets" when Jupiter, Mercury and Venus appeared together after sunset.  The next "Dance" won't occur until 2021.  One visitor enjoyed the event so much that she sent us an email:  "My husband and I attended your function on Saturday, May 25. I had never been to your museum  . . . What an enjoyable evening! The weather was great, we ran into old friends, saw Jupiter, Mercury and Venus and an informative presentation on asteroids. Well done! I plan on bringing my grandson to your next star gazing function. Thank you!" What worked really well was having enough volunteers that we were able to not only have Steve's talk and the telescopes outside, but also have volunteers answering questions about the Gold Rush exhibit and having volunteers working with the kids doing coiled clay- always a huge hit and always at least 25 kids seemed to be at the tables. Multiple focal points may be a little harder to prepare, but they pay off big time! We even made two of the local papers: IV Press: http://www.ivpressonline.com/news/ivp-news-community-takes-in-dance-of-the-planets-at-stargazing-event-20130527,0,1072911.story The Desert Review: http://www.thedesertreview.com/dance-of-the-planets-over-ocotillo/ Thanks also to Sobe's Restaurant in El Centro for generously sponsoring this event! People used their apps to find constellations Steve presenting NASA's "Near Earth Objects"

A Trip to Providence

Things have been pretty hectic lately. Between finishing our "Gold Fever!" exhibit, writing documents for a museum assessment program, working with people who come into the museum, and trying to fit in some archives work I've been running in circles. Not as much as Jessica has been, but I'm pretty hecitic too.  But I was excited to take a few days off and fly to Providence for a 1 day conference held at the Rhode Island School of Design, sponsored by a group called Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts (CCAHA).  The conference itself was called Out of the Ordinary: Preserving Paper-based Ephemera.  

I know, you just tuned out. But it was a lot of fun. I went with Chelsea Gunn, a friend from Simmons who was also nice enough to let me crash on her couch while I was in town.  We had a great time catching up with each other and listening to presentations on the more difficult aspects of archiving- those little, interesting things that are never really meant to last: ads, posters, buttons, billboards, etc.  The speakers were all very good and I came away with some good ideas- although most of them involved buying very expensive equipment that I won't get at the IVDM. Maybe at my next job.

Then to top things off, RISD had just opened an exhibit we both wanted to see: "Artist, Rebel, Dandy" 
focusing on men's fashion from the Regency and Beau Brummel up to the present.  I was surprised to see modern clothes in the exhibit as well, but it worked.  The Regency era clothes were some of what I liked best, since I like that time period, and the exhibit included newspaper cartoons of the time making fun of dandies, as well as magazines and ads in favor of the different styles of clothes.  It was a good mix and included the tux Fred Astaire wore in Top Hat and a film clip of a dance scene from the movie,  a shirt of Mark Twain's, and the only known surviving shirt belonging to Oscar Wilde (one of my favorite authors!).  It has the initials "SM" for Sebastien Melmoth, which is the name he used at the end of his life when he moved to France after being released from an English prison for being homosexual.  It was a good exhibit, with a nice mix of things.  If anyone's in the area I'd recommend checking it out!

Banyan dressing gowns worn by the Prince Regent, later George IV

Fred Astaire's Top Hat tuxedo

Oscar Wilde's shirt

Gold Fever! Exhibit opening

Rotary volunteers and Interact members

Saturday the 27th was a big day for the IVDM. In the morning, El Centro's Rotary Club and the Southwest High Interact Club spent Rotary's National Volunteer Day curating at the museum.  17 people curated 348 artifacts in 3 hours and found some cool stuff, like a fragment from a porcelain dish and an old Swiss Army knife.

One of the 348 artifacts curated by El Centro Rotary and SW Interact Club. 

Later in the afternoon, visitors from Imperial County, Jacumba and as far as San Deigo helped us celebrate the grand opening of our first traveling exhibit. "Gold Fever! Untold Stories of California's Gold Rush". It's amazing to think that last January we just finished the curation lab and today we have a full exhibit up on the walls.

A major crowd pleaser!

Exploring our new topographical map

Nearly 100 people visited throughout the afternoon to eat tacos at the cart sponsored by the El Centro Rotary Club, listen to traditional cowboy music performed by El Centro's own Jugless Jug Band, and view the exhibit. Adults and children alike enjoyed testing their knowledge of the area and identifying good hiking areas our new
topographical map of San Diego and Imperial Counties.

Families enjoyed our miner's cabin and trying to identify different objects in the miner's trunk a miner would have brought with him for work and for fun. El Centro's own Jugless Jug Band played timeless favorites like "Buffalo Girls" and "Little Brown Jug" and quizzed the museum staff on the historical meaning of each verse to "She'll be Coming 'Round the Mountain".  We didn't know nearly as much as we expected we would. (I guessed right about the 'she' in the song being the mail coach, but who knew the white horses were because the mail coach used Percherons almost exclusively, and they are grey/white?)

Jugless Jug Band

This was really exciting for me as my first major exhibit opening and getting to see all our hard work pay off.  I learned more about the Gold Rush than I ever imagined, and even more about how to put together a fantastic exhibit with only a small starting point.  I'm going to try and write an article about it for publication and a conference- we'll see how it goes!

William Swain Exhibit

The painting that inspired an exhibit

By the time I’m finished with the Gold Rush exhibit I’m sure you’ll all be pretty sick of hearing about it.  But it’s not only the most exciting thing going right now, it’s a great professional experience.  I never studied to be in museums, but I find I enjoy working on the exhibits as much as I do the archives. 

            One of the panels we got for the travelling exhibit is a painting of a miner’s cabin with miners carousing outside while one man is visible writing at a desk inside the cabin.  Neal looked at the painting and decided he’d build a miner’s shack to be part of an interactive exhibit.  Inside the shack we papered one wall with old newspapers and set a panel on “The Life of the Miner”.  One quote in the panel referred to William Swain, a peach farmer from New York who went across land to the gold fields of CA.  According to the quote, Swain wrote numerous letters back home to his wife Sabrina.  This raised my archival instincts and I went in search of William Swain and his letters.  Turns out they are archived at Yale’s Beinecke Library.  Yale has only digitized one journal entry- the first entry Swain wrote while packing his trunk to head to California.  This was a little disappointing since I was hoping for more entries and a few letters, but it was still something.  We printed out the entry as well as part of a letter and I transcribed them on the back of each page so people wouldn’t be scared off by the handwriting and would read the pages. 

Swain desk with letter and journal

            An entire corner of the museum suddenly became the William Swain corner.  The shack had quotes from Swain’s letters on the wall and a trunk we filled with artifacts Swain and other miners might have brought out with them- marbles, playing cards, a miner’s pan, an abacus, a jaw harp, fishing hooks, hardtack.  Little signs encourage kids to try and find what Swain would have used for work versus for fun.  Miner’s clothes hang on hooks on the wall and kids can try them on and have their picture taken.  A little wooden section has been filled with sand as if it was the outside of the cabin and we put shovels and pick axes out leaning against the cabin.  The painting that inspired the cabin hangs above that.  Then we set up a little desk and put Swain’s handwritten pages and the transcripts on them.  A little biography panel of Swain that I wrote hangs above the desk.

William Swain corner

Miner's shack

 My two favorite things (next to the journal entry and letter on the desk) are a map of the United States in 1849 and a picture frame on the desk.  The frame contains prints of daguerreotype images of Swain and his wife Sabrina.  It’s not an exact reproduction of the cased pictures Swain would have carried- he probably only had a cased picture of Sabrina with a velvet lining on the side opposite the picture.  But it’s really nice and I think it’s sweet to imagine William at the desk looking at the pictures while he wrote his letters to Sabrina.  It also does a good job of reminding people that the miners often left family behind.  One woman yesterday asked me if I knew if Sabrina took William back after his adventure, that’s how into she got, wanting to know what happened to the family after the gold fever wore off.  (In case you’re wondering, the answer is yes- Sabrina and their daughter Elizabeth, who was one year old when William left, did take him back and the couple had several more children.  Kids and grandkids for the rest of William’s life had to listen to his tales of life out in the gold fields.) 

William and Sabrina Swain

            The map is a cool old-fashioned looking map, showing states and territories as they stood in 1849.  I printed out little line drawing images of the means of transportation William used- steamer boat from Buffalo to Chicago, flat-bottomed river boat down to St. Louis and ox drawn covered wagons out to the Rockies.  A person walking across the Rockies (because not even oxen were dumb enough to cross the Rockies in spring) and then another ox wagon to the Yuba River in northern California and the gold fields.  I mounted the images on foam board and then the images onto the map to follow William’s path.  It’s really cool looking, pops out to people, and does a nice job of showing, not telling, how William travelled out West.

William Swain's Route

            Plenty of places would have just hung the panels and declared the exhibit open.  But we wanted our exhibit to be more than that.  We wanted to connect patrons with miners and their lives, to make something interactive for all ages and still educational.  We’re not finished with the exhibit yet, but as far as William Swain is concerned, I think we’ve accomplished what we set out to do.

            

Lantern Slide Project

Lantern slides in archival envelopes and box, on display

My favorite project at the museum is the Percy Palmer Lantern Slide collection.  I took over working on the collection when I first got here in September and I am almost finished with it.  The museum has a collection of nearly 800 lantern slides donated to us by teacher and former Brawley principal Percy Palmer.  Palmer taught high school science, especially geology.  Lantern slides were the original PowerPoint slides- glass negatives on 3x4 pieces of glass that could be put into a small 'magic lantern' device and projected onto the wall.  Between 1930-1940 Palmer took photographs throughout Imperial County of different geologic formation to illustrate his school lectures.  He also seems to have either taught or had a personal interest in natural science and architecture, because a large number of photographs are of evolutionary trees and skeletons in museums, cathedrals around the world and historical tourist locations like the Library of Congress and Mount Vernon.  I can only assume he gave lectures on these as well, but he also could have collected them for himself.

Cleaning a lantern slide

My project is to take the slides, clean them, write descriptions of the image and the slide's physical condition, repair any damage that I can, and then re-house the slides in archival envelopes and boxes.  When I'm finished we're going to get them all scanned with a backlit scanner and digitized.  We may set up a separate link on our website to them, we may use the images for prints we can frame and hang on the walls in an exhibit. Palmer didn't do much in the way of writing down locations of the photographs he took, or the names of any people who appeared in the pictures.  I'm hoping to post these 'unknown' photographs on sites like Flicker, Facebook, or other crowdsourcing sites to see if anyone can identify the people and places we can't.  Identification can come from unexpected sources. Some of our Ocotillo friends brought their children and grandchildren to see the exhibit in progress and they saw one of the lantern slide images we have already blown up and framed and are planning to use to illustrate one of the exhibit panels. Palmer hadn't identified the location or the people posed in it, but we were thinking it might connect to one of the mines.  They looked at the pictures and said "That's where we were yesterday!" They had gone on a hike in Shell Canyon and had a picture on their camera that was the exact same location, with one of the grandkids on the same rock as the people in the original 1930s image.  They're going to send us the picture so we can use it as a 'then and now' in an exhibit after the Gold Rush.  It is a great example of never knowing who will be able to help you out and know something that expands what you have already.

Adding Mylar over slide

Most of the slides I have are in good shape and only need a little cleaning. I use an eyeglass cleaning cloth on them and they are fine.  Some are broken in pieces or cracked and need extra support.  For these I encase the image in Mylar and easily removable archival tape along the edges and make notes in the Excel database I've created for the slides. I'm considering working on an article about the collection and my work with them to get published in one of the archival magazines, since getting published is something that potential employers always seem to like to see. I love the collection, and working on the slides is sometimes the best part of my week.  I got a taste of glass negatives in Martha Mahard's Archival Photographs class at Simmons, and getting my hands on actual slides has been a fantastic experience.  Whether it is one others would consider worth writing about, I don't know. But I'm more and more drawn to old photographs- daguerreotypes, tintypes, glass images, etc. and it would seem a shame not to write about this collection so that when I'm finished with it, it will be a collection others know about and can use for research.  That is, after all, one of the points of an archive.

Ghost Mountain Hike

Blair Valley

Monday was the one day out of the week that I wasn't feeling ill from a migraine, which was good timing because that was the day Bill took us up to Blair Valley for some hikes.  There were three circuits- one hike to a pictograph location, one to see some morteros, and one up Ghost Mountain.

Section of pictograph rock

I think the pictograph hike was my favorite.  It was mostly flat, but some challenging inclines for those of us not in great shape, and the plant life included many things we don't get to see lower down in our part of the desert. Giant stalks of agave and yucca run wild there, which is cool because those are the two plants you hear talked about as what the Native Americans use for everything. Yucca in particular is very fibrous and can be turned into cord, shoes, and all sorts of things we wouldn't imagine trying nowadays. The pictographs themselves were cool.  No one knows exactly what they mean, so we can all have our own theories.  Mel's favorite was that they showed pictures designing a new fish trap and a real estate opportunity- act now!  It's very interesting to think about the people who were here first and what their stories might have been, why they drew things in certain places and not others, what the images meant, if they were added to over the years. And how long will they last? Geoglyphs are disappearing due to erosion and people driving over them, will pictographs all face similar fates? Some early archaeologists worked to 'save' some pictographs by repainting them so they'd still stand out. That seems more like ensuring a tourist attraction than respecting a culture's images to me, but I could certainly be convinced to a different way of thinking.

Pictograph rock

The mortero walk was shorter but nice for getting another image of how people lived.  Morteros are indentations in rock where people ground acorns, seeds, etc. to make flour.  Some are pretty shallow, others deep enough to be more like a mortar and pestle arrangement.  When the Kumeyaay were going through this area they would stop here to grind what they'd gathered. Women's work of course, since men wouldn't have the patience for it. The sign at the head of the trail talked about how you should sit and quietly image what it would have been like for people using the area. We all laughed at this- none of us are willing to believe that a large group of women, having time to themselves, are going to sit quietly to work and not gossip, joke, and talk about their husbands while the men aren't around!  Some things don't change that much over time!

Some deeper morteros

The last hike was the hardest.  We went to climb Ghost Mountain to see the ruins of Marshal South's home. South is famous (here anyway) for packing up and moving his family out to live on top of Ghost Mountain back in the 1930s.  The official idea was that he was a writer and wanted to go 'back to nature' in the truest Romantic Emerson/Thoreau tradition, live like the native peoples had and then write articles about it for people back East so they could romanticism this way of life. According to Bill, who worked with one of the sons, the wife and kids hated it (and him too by the end I expect). They lasted about 10 years before Mrs South divorced her husband, took the kids and left. When we got to Ghost Mountain (they named it, no ghosts associated with the site to anyone's knowledge) all we could think was- why did it take her so long to divorce him? I'd have taken one look at the mountain and told my husband to enjoy his experiment, taken the Model T and headed back to civilization.

Along the 'trail' to the top of Ghost Mountain

Looking up Ghost Mountain, near the top

It's about a mile hike up a steep mountain on a narrow and not especially fun trail.  When the Souths lived there they would have had to haul up anything like food, water, supplies, etc. by hand. Maybe by mule if they had one. We all went up at our own pace and I was last. When I finally got to a flat place high up on the trail I thought I'd made it only to find that now there was a lot of rocks to climb up to get to the top. There's no way this guy just went out there to experience nature. I think he must have been hiding from the mafia or something. There's no other explanation for why it would seem like a good idea.

Ruins of Marshal South home

Long story short, peer pressure got me up the mountain that altitude sickness suggested I not climb.  The ruins of the small house and the water cistern they used are still there, along with the tin can trash pile they gathered over the years.  Kind of takes away from the living off the land theory, but maybe Mrs South put her foot down over something at least. The view was pretty cool, but not worth the hassle of living there. It did give you a good idea of how high up you were though. I've often wondered, especially on the drive to and from Yuma, what people were thinking to come out and settle these areas that aren't always hospitable now, let alone back then.  It must have been nearly impossible. I gain a whole new level of respect for the pioneers who did this. But you also have to wonder a little about their sanity for trying it.  In the case of the Souths and Ghost Mountain, I think you have to wonder about the sanity of the idea a lot. They weren't exactly living at Walden Pond out here.  

Going down, can finally make out the Jeep!